2. Sita in the Kitchen

ehind the famous injunctions to Hindu women, “Be like BSita!” or “Be a Second Sita!” lies the ideal of the perfect wife (pativrata), the ever-devoted and Sita in the Kitchen: faithful Sita found in the many versions (katha) of the Ramayana. The Pativrata and Ramarajya The paradigm of the pativrata most certainly includes the performance of one of the wife’s chief traditional Phyllis K. Herman duties: cooking for her husband as well as family, guests, and the gods. Yet in most of the classical Rasois attested to by ethnographers exiles (vanavasis) Rama, Sita, and Ramayanas that define the pativrata, and listed in the modern compendium Lakshmana. the quintessential perfect wife never of pilgrimage sites known as the At least two of Sita’s kitchens cooks. To literally be a second Sita, Tirthank Kalyan (Second edition, have been documented in Ayodhya, the most the ideal wife would have 1995), I chose to visit several along but only one survived the demolition to do is gather nuts and fruit from one possible route taken by the forest of the Babri Masjid in 1992. I found the forest. Why is this wife/goddess who is never in the kitchen commemorated throughout India by kitchen shrines (Sita Rasois)? They exist today in Ayodhya, where it is said that Sita cooked for Dasharatha and his family, and in many places that loosely correspond to where she might have cooked for Rama, Lakshmana, and her twin sons during her times of exile in the forest (vanavas). These shrines commemorating her putative culinary artistry do much more than quaintly concretize a gloss on the textual Ramayanas; they present and represent the banquet of meanings, symbols, and concepts linking the roles of women, wives, and goddesses to the production of ideal kingship, both at home and in exile. The Sita Rasois of the city and forest are signs of the movable feast associated with Sita: from her flows the bounty that is the foundation for the once and future utopian world of fruitful abundance that is Ramarajya. Visiting Sita Rasois In Ayodhya, an elaborate Sita’s Kitchen lies abandoned behind locked gates. Elsewhere in India, however, a number of Sita’s Kitchens still function as sites of pilgrimage and devotion. From the many Sita No. 120 5 the intact Sita Rasoi within the arrow pointing towards the shrine. Tulsidas and more footprints left by fenced-off complex on the Ramkot, Following the arrow, I found a small Rama. The signs instruct the pilgrim in the building bearing the painted- cave, again labeled Sita's Rasoi in to have darshan of Rama’s footprints on phrase “Janmasthana Sita Rasoi” orange paint where, according to the and then proceed to the cottage that (Birthplace Sita’s Kitchen). The local pandas, Sita cooked for her is the Sita Rasoi. This small Rasoi shrine is in the basement and sons, Kusha and Lava, while at structure, which is built of stone and quite beautiful. It has on the floor Valmiki’s Ashram. Visible near the painted white, commemorates Sita’s three tiles patterned in green, white, cave is an ancient, and now dry, path cooking for Rama and Lakshmana, and black a concrete-block sitting made by running water, a factor that at Chitrakut, during the first vanavas. place; a concrete-and-tile rolling would have made it a good kitchen At the shrine’s entrance are what board; and a molded-concrete rolling place. The tin sign describing the spot looks like a grinding stone and a pin. Near the back wall is an oven as a Sita Rasoi was lying on the board for rolling dough. Within the (chulha), and above it is a shrine to ground, and the shrine itself was shrine is a rolling pin and, built into Sita. The panda described the neglected. One panda explained that the back wall, a chulha. On the wall Janmasthana as the place where robbers had taken the images (murtis) above this flower-laden chulha is Rama was nurtured and spent most of Sita, Kusha, and Lava, and graffiti referring to the “mother of therefore the site had lost popularity. of his childhood, and he said that the children” and “fruits of [or in] this Four new murtis of Sita, Kusha, Lava, kitchen was where Sita cooked her kitchen (chaukasthan)” — that is, and Valmiki carved in marble lay first meal for Rama’s father, although this Sita Rasoi marks a spot nearby, awaiting installation. Once Dasharatha (see Herman, 1998). from the first vanavas, the graffiti they were in place, the panda said, From Ayodhya, I traveled west to references motherhood as well as worship (puja) at the Rasoi and the the Bharadvaja Ashram in modern cooking. Across from the Rasoi is Ashram would again be popular. Allahabad (Prayag). Various sources another structure, a shrine dedicated About an hour from Lalapur lies had led me to believe that a Sita Rasoi the holy town of Chitrakut. The to Sita and Rama, in which the was there, at the ashram where Chitrakut Mahatmya begins by emphasis is again on Sita. Her murti Valmiki recounts that Rama, Sita, praising the area: “When in is gloriously arrayed, and women’s and Lakshmana resided for a short Chitrakut you are on the right path. bangle bracelets hang from the walls time. I found what looked like fairly . Looking at what can be found to form a sort of a frame above and new temples to Shiva and to the there, no worldly desires will detract around this image. goddess Santoshi Mata at the ashram, you from your aims.” The Mahatmya Departing from the route of the but the women who ran the temples goes on to give routes for modern first forest exile, I went north from stated firmly that the Sita Rasoi was pilgrimages in and around Chitrakut. Chitrakut to Brahmavarta, near in Chitrakut, not in Allahabad. On the first day, the pilgrim (pujari) Bithur, Uttar Pradesh, where I knew Nonetheless, they and the pandas I should circum-ambulate Kamadgiri there to be a Sita’s Kitchen yet again talked to in and around Allahabad all Hill. On the second day, the pujari located in a Valmiki Ashram, where said the same thing about Sita must climb another hill, east of the Sita gave birth and raised Kusha and cooking: When Sita was at the Kamadgiri, on which is situated the Lava during her second vanavas. I Bharadvaja Ashram ‘of course she Hanuman Dhara Mandir. This had seen pictures of this Sita’s cooked.’ Mandir is about halfway up the steep Kitchen that had been taken in the Continuing towards Chitrakut on hill and, after puja there, he should 1980s, but when I arrived in 2000, I the same possible route of the first continue to the top, to the Sita Rasoi. found that the complex had been forest exile, I visited the village of Along the way, the pilgrim should renovated. The landmarks of the Lalapur, about an hour east of stop at the hill’s many sites Ramayanakatha remained the same, Allahabad. There, at the top of a commemorating scenes from the of course: ‘‘There,’’ the visitor will hill—above a temple (mandir) to a Ramayanakatha, including several be told, ‘‘Is where Sita gave birth; local goddess and adjacent to a sets of Rama’s footprints imbedded over there is the garden where the Valmiki Ashram, a site from Sita’s in the stones. twins kept the horse they stole from second forest exile—are the clearly At the very top of the hill, Rama’s Ashvamedha; that is where marked remains of a Sita’s Kitchen. commanding an incredible view of Sita entered the underworld—and Written on an outcropping of rock the Mandakini River and the land here, at the center of this Valmiki directly below the ashram is the below, is the Sita Rasoi complex. At Ashram, is where Sita cooked for phrase “Sita Rasoi” with a white its entry is a life-size statue of Kusha and Lava.’’ 6 MANUSHI The kitchen shrine is a small free- Ashram in Uttar Pradesh, lies another supposed to be, I found only two standing structure, newly painted geography filled with locales from the square stones, empty wall niches white and designated with a plaque, Ramayanakatha: the city of Nasik, in whose red stains marked a history of rather than the painted-on label of the Maharashtra. The Tirthank Kalyan worship, and a Shivalingam. This 1980s. The front aperture, where has Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana cave, according to the staff on hand, offerings are placed, frames a large living in the forests of Panchavati and was where Rama and Lakshmana hid bell that hangs from the center of the Tapovan, and it is from this general Sita while they went on their forest shrine’s ceiling. While the bell was area that Ravana kidnapped Sita. I adventures; in their absence, she not in the photographs from the went to Nasik following reports of a occupied her time, they said, by 1980s, and a third shelf had been Sita’s Kitchen within a cave in meditating on Shiva. added within the shrine’s niche, Panchavati. Beneath the shade of five It was difficult to see evidence of a apparently to accommodate utensils kitchen shrine in the cave, but the staff along with the murti of Sita and the banyan trees is indeed a cave chulha, the building itself seems dedicated to Sita (the sign reads “Sita informed me that the Sita Rasoi was unchanged. Gumpha” [sic], but in the tripartite across the street.

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